I went to a magnet middle school in small town south GA in 1988 where we had an Applesoft Basic programming course. All of the public high schools also had elective Basic courses while I was in school.

From the best I can tell, teaching programming in was a thing in the mid 80s to mid 90s and then declined

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/09/01/kappan_kafai.ht...